Georgia Tech Academics Digest: Patent Workshops, Real Talk Thursdays, and PACE Planning — October 7, 2026

Wednesday brought a steady stream of campus announcements out of the Flats, with the Georgia Tech Library opening up its patent research expertise, Student Engagement & Well-Being inviting students into a frank conversation about loneliness, and the research computing team laying out a long-range maintenance plan. Here’s what landed on October 7, 2026.

Real Talk Thursdays Tackles Loneliness and Belonging

Student Engagement & Well-Being has set the next installment of its monthly town hall series, Real Talk Thursdays, for Thursday, October 22 from 11 a.m. to noon in the Rafael Bras Meeting Room of the John Lewis Student Center. The series is open to all students and is built around open dialogue between students and campus leadership. This month’s focus is combatting loneliness — how to build meaningful friendships, foster social wellness, and find the campus services that support belonging and community. Dunkin’ munchkins and giveaways are part of the deal, and students can RSVP on Engage. Undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs are all welcome.

Library Workshops: Patent Searching, Parts I and II

Innovators and researchers have a two-part primer on the calendar. Patent Searching — Part I runs online Monday, November 2 from 2 to 3 p.m., opening with a brief introduction to intellectual property before moving into hands-on preliminary searches using publicly accessible patent tools. Registration is open now.

The follow-up, Patent Searching — Part II, follows on Tuesday, November 3, also online from 2 to 3 p.m. Part II covers patent classification systems and digs into two databases in particular: Espacenet, which is open access, and PatSnap, available to the Georgia Tech community. Attendees are encouraged to follow along with the tool demonstrations. Both sessions are open to students, faculty, staff, and guests.

Event Services 101: AV Essentials for Departments

For the faculty and staff who keep campus meetings running, Student and Campus Event Centers is hosting Event Services 101: AV Essentials for Successful Events on Monday, November 2 from 1 to 2 p.m. The workshop walks through the AV equipment and services available for campus events, presenter tips, the difference between AV support and IT support, how to coordinate when bringing your own gear or hiring an outside vendor, and the details that make hybrid meetings actually work. Registration is open.

PACE Maintenance Window Announced for May 2027

Georgia Tech’s high performance computing team has posted advance notice of a PACE maintenance window running from 6 a.m. Tuesday, May 11, 2027 through 11:59 p.m. Thursday, May 13. All headnodes and clusters will be unavailable during upgrades intended to improve the overall PACE experience. Researchers who plan compute-heavy work months in advance will want that on the calendar now; specifics will be published closer to the date on the PACE announcements blog.

Looking Ahead

A quieter day on the research front, but a telling one — patents, computing infrastructure, and student well-being all in the same twenty-four hours is about as Georgia Tech as it gets. Which of these are you planning to attend? Drop a comment and let us know, and check back tomorrow for the next academics and research digest.